Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Readers of this blog probably know how much I love glitz, but many battmeisters eschew such additives for a variety of reasons. Anna of Corgi Hill decided against working with Angelina fiber after a bag of it exploded and left her, well, rather sparkly. Others feel that Firestar (trilobal nylon) and Angelina are scratchy. And some feel glittery yarn is somehow undignified.

Not me! I love to spin with glitz, I love to knit with glitz, and search out batts containing glitz, preferably in high concentrations. So it should come as no surprise that I figured out a simple way to add sparkle to batts that lack what I consider an essential ingredient.

If you paid attention to my first Batt Editing post, you might recall that I showed you how to split a batt into two layers. But if not, let me show you again.

Here we have a perfectly lovely example of a glitz-less batt from the immensely talented Zauberzeug
:

I carefully peel the two layers apart...

...and sprinkle the bottom layer with Angelina:

Just flop the top layer back on the bottom layer:

And roll it back up:

Needless to say, you can use this technique to add anything you might want to spin--strands of silk, Firestar, exotic fibers of which you only have a tiny bit, or slices of pepperoni, and so on.

On another note, I promised you some killer tomatoes, so I would be remiss if I didn't include a photo, taken several weeks ago. At that time, the plants were approaching 11 feet in height, and had outgrown our double stack of tomato cages by a wide margin.

Roy, who was an Eagle Scout and knows how to do things like assemble tripods, crafted several out of our very own bamboo and is seen in the above photo tying one of the plants, fondly named Terminator One, onto the supports. I should add that the plants are now over 14 feet tall, although we are training them down the supports, because we don't have a taller stepladder and would feel idiotic trying to harvest our crop by tossing rocks at the fruit.

Last year we planted four plants, three of which promptly died. The survivor barely attained a meter in height and spent the entire summer generating six puny tomatoes. This year, we figure to harvest about 200 pounds of fruit from the four plants that were really cute when we plopped them into the soil but now consume a cow a day and we'd better be on time with the feeding....

You can avoid future gargantuan tomatoes by either a) buying a variety labelled "determinate" or b) nipping off the top bud of the plant when it gets as big as you want it to. If you do (b) it will try to grow sideways, so be prepared to keep nipping. It will yield nicer tomatoes, though, as it will put the energy into fruit instead of vine.

I'm introducing some silk into some fibre right now, so that was interesting - and then I got distracted by your Monster Toms. You definitely need to pinch the tops out, preferably before they take over the world - but maybe they already have…

Count me in as another angelina/glitz lover as well. I love everything but the kitchen sink batts, to be honest. They're great for making fool-proof art yarns. I've been noticing though that the glitz trend seems to be fizzling off a bit...I currently have a batt in all these awesome cotton candy colours that I picked up in Sarasota that could totally use some sparkle, and I know I have a few baggies scattered about the house. Thanks for the tutorial (which all of a sudden seems like a no-brainer).